Former Survivor contestant Brice Johnston (centre) hosts a Survivor 50 watch party at MVP Resto-Bar Sportif in Montreal.John Lee/Supplied
It’s highly unusual to be in a packed sports bar in Montreal and hear a crowd shouting to turn off the hockey game.
But that’s what happened on a recent Wednesday, when former Survivor players Wendell Holland (Season 36, winner) and Brice Johnston (Season 28, third voted out) rolled into town to host a watch party for the 50th season of the American reality TV competition at MVP Resto-Bar Sportif on Rue Sainte-Catherine Est.
When the screens facing the upstairs balcony and VIP section had still not switched over from sports at 8 p.m. as that week’s episode was beginning, about two dozen past players of Survivor Québec – the local spin-off of the international reality franchise – in the bar began to howl in unison.
“It’s like a Survivor Québec reunion with Brice and Wen,” Holland said, smiling after he and Johnston had scrambled to resolve the situation.
The two Philadelphians became pals after their first stints on the American version of Survivor – and started regularly hosting events in the U.S. and Canada under the Brice and Wen Present banner after the peak of the pandemic.
Wendell Holland, left, and Survivor Québec host Patrice Bélanger.John Lee/Supplied
It’s been a sometimes break-even, sometimes profitable side gig for 10 biannual seasons. Tooling around from city to city each week, they invite other Survivor alums in the vicinity to join.
A couple of years ago, Martin Cousineau – the first player to be voted out in the first season of Survivor Québec, which premiered in 2023 – came to one of Holland and Johnston’s watch parties. Then, Cousineau started bringing other castmates – to parties in Toronto, New York, Boston – and soon Québécois contestants were a fixture on the circuit.
“They became the life of the party,” said Johnston.
In Montreal, enough showed up to the Survivor 50 watch party to cast an all-star edition of Survivor Québec or two.
One superfan showed me a Bristol board he got signed by 29 contestants at the end of the evening: three from the American version (Holland, Johnston and Torontonian Omar Zaheer, from Season 42; English-speaking Canadians have been allowed to compete since Season 39) and the rest from the Quebec iteration.
John Lee/Supplied
Also on hand was Survivor Québec host Patrice Bélanger. The 47-year-old was there as a fan but nevertheless sprang into action partway through, taking a microphone during one commercial break to pump up the crowd, in French, for the fourth season of his show that begins on April 5.
Bélanger, a veteran presence on Quebec TV who anglophone viewers may remember as the killer in Bon Cop, Bad Cop, has both the dimples and unbridled enthusiasm for the game of his American counterpart, Jeff Probst. The two have not met, however.
“I would love to sit down and chat with Jeff,” Bélanger said. “That would be a dream come true, if ever one day I get to chat with him for even five minutes.”
But Bélanger could teach Probst a thing or two, too. Survivor Québec, which runs nightly from Sunday to Thursday instead of once a week, is a more challenging format for players.
The Quebec winner of Season 4 will have to outwit, outlast and outplay others for 40 days in Panama, while the American one only has to survive for 26 days in Fiji in Season 50.
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The rewards are not comparable either: Survivor Québec contestants starve themselves and sleep in makeshift shelters for a $100,000 grand prize in Canadian dollars, instead of the US$1-million winnings in the American version.
Nicolas Brunette, who won the first season of Survivor Québec, says that the money was nevertheless life-changing, since he won at the age of 23. “My chum and I are adopting a baby,” he said, a long process that he and his partner hope will be done in December and has been made easier from his winnings.
But the lower stakes may account why the community that surrounds Survivor Québec is so strong; Brunette was at the watch party, his arm around his friend and season-mate Maryse Lauzon, who he beat, but he says will be a “matante” to his child.
The biggest vedette of the Survivor Québec players in the bar that night, however, wasn’t a winner but second season runner-up Kassandre Bastarache.
The blond blindsider’s gameplay has been compared to that of American Parvati Shallow, an all-time Survivor great – who Bastarache faced off against in Australian Survivor: Australia v the World last year.
Martin Cousineau, a contestant from Survivor Québec season one, toasts Kass Bastarache, a contestant from Survivor Québec 2 and Survivor: Australia v The World, with a shot.John Lee/Supplied
That international season of the franchise has become known in Survivor circles as one of the all-time best – which made Bastarache a hot commodity with Survivor fans across TV solitudes.
“I don’t like attention,” Bastarache insisted, while on a break from taking selfies with fans (and shots with fellow players).
What she does like is Survivor. She grew up watching the American version and admiring the gameplay of Shallow, Cirie Fields and Tony Vlachos, all of whom she got to play against in Australia. “It was a dream come true,” she said.
At MVP Resto-Bar Sportif, the line between players and fans was decidedly blurred. A couple of the latter I spoke with had applied to Survivor Québec; the odds are much better for them than Americans and English-speaking Canadians trying to make it on the U.S. version.
At 10 p.m., the Survivor 50 episode was over for half an hour, but the Survivor Québec crew seemed to be just getting started as the organizers were preparing to pack it in.
Observing the scene, Johnston – who had to get a red eye out to make it back to his day job as a social worker – pronounced the merge of reality TV tribes a success.
“We all speak the same language of Survivor,” he said. “Now in the world, more than ever, we need something to bring us together.”
Survivor 50 continues Wednesdays on Global. Survivor Québec Season 4 begins (in French) on Noovo and Crave on Sunday.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the photo identification of Brice Johnston, and the names of Nicolas Brunette and Maryse Lauzon.